This image provided by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory shows a meteor over Reno on April 22, 2012. The space rock-turned-flaming meteor entered Earth’s atmosphere about 8 a.m. that day. Reports of the fireball have come in from as far north as Sacramento and as far east as north Las Vegas. Bill Cooke of the Meteoroid Environments Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., estimates the object was about the size of a minivan, weighed about 70 metric tons and at the time of disintegration released energy equivalent to a 5-kiloton explosion.

Photo: Lisa Warren / Associated Press

This image provided by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory shows a...

Image 2 of 6

Robert Ward displays one of two pieces of a meteorite he found at a park in Lotus, Calif., Wednesday, April 25, 2012. Ward found the pieces from a meteor that was probably about the size of a minivan when it entered the Earth's atmosphere with a loud boom about 8 a.m. Sunday. The rocks came from a meteor, believed to between 4 to 5 billion years old. Ward, who has been hunting and collecting meteorites for more than 20 years, said they are believed to be "one of the oldest things known to man and one of the rarest types of meteorites there is.(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

Photo: Rich Pedroncelli, Associated Press

Robert Ward displays one of two pieces of a meteorite he found at a...

Image 3 of 6

Petrus Jenniskens, the same NASA astronomer who trekked across the Nubian desert four years ago to recover fragments of a small asteroid and bring them home, said Wednesday he had found fragments of the space object on the asphalt parking lot of Henningsen? Lotus Park, located in the small town of Lotus in El Dorado County.

(04-26) 12:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Searchers near historic Sutter's Mill have discovered fragments of the meteorite that exploded high in the sky at sunrise last Sunday.

Petrus Jenniskens, the same NASA astronomer who trekked across the Nubian desert four years ago to recover fragments of a small asteroid and bring them home, said Wednesday he had found fragments of the space object on the asphalt parking lot of Henningsen Lotus Park, located in the small town of Lotus in El Dorado County.

A fragment, he said, had fallen on an asphalt road in the parking lot and was crushed into smaller fragments by a car that ran over it.

"This meteor itself must have been big," Jenniskens said, "probably in the kiloton range. But now we need to find more fragments so we can begin to understand how it broke apart and what was inside it."

A team of searchers from the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View has been searching this week and will continue Thursday, Jenniskens said.

"Now we're hoping that anyone who has any videos or amateur photos of the explosion itself will contact us so we can begin to understand the meteor's trajectory before it exploded.